*SCRIPT*
Mads: Hi and welcome back to “Yo is this… Segregation? The podcast where we talk about all things related to the systemic injustices surrounding segregation issues. My name is Mads Spearing.
Addy: Hi, I’m Addy Zenko
Emily: Hi, I’m Emily Pesce
Mads: Let’s get into today’s topic.
Emily: I found a very interesting specific injustice that I think is super important for us to analyze, especially given today’s environment. This was something that occurred in September of this year at the University of Michigan Dearborn. To kind of summarize, the school organized an initiative to try and allow students to share their life experiences in a safe environment. They made weekly virtual “cafes”, so students could share with each other. The trouble with this was they separated them by People Of Color and Non-People Of Color students. They went as far to create separate zoom links for each group.
Mads: What was their reasoning for doing this?
Emily: The virtual “cafes” were supposed to help create conversations and crucial dialogues about diversity and inclusion, but I believe that it has done the opposite. I believe that this is a form of separation and segregation and crucial conversations should be occurring as a student body and as a whole, not separately. So, is this segregation?
Mads: Yes. Absolutely. I mean did they really believe that this would be appropriate given everything that has happened within the last few months. Now granted I think they might have tried to bring everyone together, but I don’t think this message of unity and inclusion was clearly portrayed.
Addy: I agree; it seems as if they completely missed the mark and wound up doing more harm than good. It makes me wonder, too, if they even had a POC at the table where that decision was being made. I have trouble comprehending how, at such a progressive institution, every single person in that discussion overlooked the underlying roots of segregation in that action.
Mads: Exactly. This almost makes me think it was a calculated move, like a PR stunt or something that they thought would become trendy for other universities to incorporate. Instead this was structurally implemented and put upon the students to comply, ultimately making the whole situation awkward and uncomfortable for everybody involved.
Emily: That’s a good point. I agree with you guys and I find it pretty hard to believe that an Institution as big as the University of Michigan with the reach they have and the resources, and just their name, that they wouldn’t be able to forecast the backlash that they received from this. It is pretty clear that it would have happened. Yes, crucial conversations must be happening in today’s world, but they should be happening inclusively with everyone welcome to speak.
Mads: This country has had a long history dealing with segregation and it saddens me that this systemic injustice has continued to be so prevalent today. MLK worked tirelessly to fight segregation during the Civil Rights movement. I refuse to believe that this movement had no real effect on our society. In light of UM’s blunder, what do you think can be done to improve? How has this form of segregation changed or progressed since MLK’s time?
Addy: You’re right, Mads. MLK was such an integral component of the Civil Rights movement in the US, and he worked alongside innumerable others whose names are not assigned the same magnitude, including John Lewis, who we also read about in CS1100. MLK was a vital force in pushing the needle to garner public support behind nonviolence and recognition of the injustices which plagued the US and still affect us today. I think that Dr. King would be saddened to see that although things have improved, the fact remains that the majority-white US has no idea how to go about constructing an equitable society, given that it is such uncharted territory since the country was built on slavery and subjugation of the subaltern.
Mads: Absolutely, and I think it is worth noting that it has been almost 60 years since the movement ended. I wonder how this country has continued to maintain an underlying segregationist view? It has definitely become a conversation that must persist. We should be educating the next generation to prevent this issue from occurring.
Emily: I think there are clear differences from today and back when Martin Luther King Jr was fighting for civil rights, but these differences are only so much. Yes, laws have changed and on paper, things should be better, but in reality that’s just not the case. Sure you could say we have progressed as a nation, I just don’t think that we have progressed as much as we think we have. Looking at protests in Martin Luther King Jr’s time versus today, um, we are still fighting for the same things. So, if we have changes, and things have changed, then why are we protesting for the exact same reasons as before?
Mads: I completely agree. I think there is so much more that needs to be done. MLK started this fight, but it has not yet finished. We must make those progressions and let our voices be heard to fight segregation.
Emily: Just to bring it back to improvement and the Michigan case, I feel as though starting crucial dialogues and conversations is a very important step. I think that the University of Michigan had the right idea, they just truly didn’t understand the importance of having the whole student body talking together as one . You should not be separating us more, we need to work all together as humans to have conversations, and then eventually make change.
Mads: I don’t think segregation has ever truly gone away. I think we have slowly transitioned away from learning about history, which has ultimately hurt us and led to more issues today. I agree; U of M definitely needed to have more of a conversation as a whole rather than splitting up the groups by race.
Addy: Segregation, though I have never personally experienced it, is far greater than physical division. There is an additional dimension when we consider the psychological implications, particularly the impact of being isolated from those around you. No amount of physical reintegration will be able to fill in that void, but active reparations are often a good way to start. In our reading for CS 1100, we, too, have learned about the pervasiveness of segregation and its seemingly incomprehensible scope. In Persepolis, we witnessed the characters experiencing segregation based on gender. Women became required to wear a veil, and the schools become divided; the protagonist, Marji, begins to understand that she is subjugated into a “second class citizen” for no reason other than a factor which she cannot control. We see segregation, too, in our reading of The Leavers, though it is in less of an institutional sense. Chinese-American Deming is subjected to discrimination of all kinds from his classmates, who write their biases off as “harmless jokes,” while simultaneously framing his heritage as something that needs to be quote unquote “Americanized” and corrected.
Emily: I feel like our characters all have this sense of isolation inside of themselves. Somehow they are all interconnected by this feeling of being on the outside. In a sense, this is segregation at the core right? If you feel isolated and like an outsider, you are essentially segregated from the world around you. This feeling is not a good thing. So why have we been creating and forcing segregation upon people for so long? Marji felt segregated when people around her cast her off as different multiple times, and people in America feel like this all the time because of their race. So why do we do it? We are always pushing someone away to a corner and segregating them from the normal. We all know that is not a good place to be in, so why is it continuing to happen? I am starting to believe that the concept of segregation can be an internal concept as well as an external one. As we talk about history like Martin Luther King Jr, that was external where it was segregation by law. University of Michigan took place in external segregation too because they were an institution that created the segregation of their students. Then, there is also internalized segregation, when you feel so isolated from what is around you that you are segregated from the world. This would be like Marji and Demming when they feel so separated from people around them that they create their own segregation in a sense.
Mads: I agree, I think segregation can be seen in many forms like institutional, gender, and social just to name a few. We know this happens in the open and behind closed doors. Segregation isn’t a secret and the sense of isolation can definitely be seen within these books as the characters face multiple challenges. It is important for us to recognize the negative implications that segregation can have on these characters and then further be able to apply it to the situations like the University of Michigan.
Emily: This idea connects to “othering”, something that we have been discussing a lot in class this semester. I believe segregation is a form of othering because you are putting people, races, identities, and more into different and separate categories. This creates the “other” because once people are segregated, they are no longer a part of the whole, they are the one and the other. So, segregation like we have recounted during this conversation are all forms of othering. The University of Michigan segregated students of color and then made them the other by doing this. Demming was segregated in many respects because of his experiences, and then was defined by his otherness, and the list goes on. All of these examples are both othering and segregation.
Addy: I agree, Emily. UM’s thoughtless decision to create an atmosphere for students of color in which “their identity is their difference,” in the words of Spivak, is a perpetuation of the same divisions they tried to combat in the first place. This decision was ultimately indicative of all of the work that is yet to be done to create a fair and equitable society.
Mads: Yes, absolutely. I think there is a lesson to be learned with what happened at the University of Michigan. It is crucial that we continue to have deep and meaningful conversations that can help create a more positive environment for all.
Mads: We hope you enjoyed our conversation. Be sure to check out the link below for more information on the issue we discussed today. Thanks for listening!
FOR MORE INFORMATION
UM Dearborn catches fire for race-based ‘cafes,’ issues apology